[Photo by Jennifer Simonson for MPR] This morning as I was driving to work I heard a wonderful story by Sasha Aslanian on MPR about the Heartland Girl's Ranch. Heartland began as a group home for adolescent girls with behavioral issues and found over the years that more and more of the girls referred to [...]
[Photo by Catherine Green for LA Weekly] The LA Weekly published a story last Thursday about the story of one young man struggling to find his way after aging out of the system, and a family that has informally offered resources and support. This story deftly describes the many ways in which young adults aging [...]
For many children in foster care or those adopted from foster care, being separated from one or more sibling is unfortunately a common experience. Although the sibling relationship is the longest relationship any person will have to another family member, about 70% of the children in foster care also have another sibling in care. Because [...]
Photo by Chris Wilson for the Journal Sentinel The abuse of children who have been adopted by their adoptive parents is particularly tragic, considering that adoption is supposed to be the safe haven for children who have already experienced the traumatic dissolution of their birth families. A recent case of the abuse of internationally adopted [...]
Significant changes were made to the foster care statutes in the last legislative session. This post will summarize part of the new legislation changes, and more will come in a future post. Several definitions were amended: "Child" was amended to include references to other statutes allowing youth to remain in foster care to age 21."Sibling" [...]
One of the long-held myths about adoption has been that children become confused about the concept of having more than one set of parents. This became one of the rationales used to amend birth certificates identifying adoptive parents as birth parents once an adoption finalization has occurred in the United States, and to justify closed [...]
I've mentioned before what a wonderful resource the Child Welfare Information Gateway Library subscriptions are to professionals, researchers and families.I subscribe to a number of their "Libraries" - adoption, permanency, prevention, well being, etc. Each month the CWIG gathers the newest research articles, practice guides and policy updates on a number of child welfare topics, [...]
A story by Gail Rosenblum was published today in the StarTribune that is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon a scenario in the child welfare system these days. Tomorrow, the MN Court of Appeals will hear arguments on behalf of two families that want to raise two young girls that have been in foster care. We [...]